Persimmon Gap

They rode through the narrow passage in the hot, dry, despoblado. Their European garments frayed and their gaunt sweatless bodies blackened against a blazing sun.

“Agua,” The head rider spoke just above a whisper.

“Si, agua,” repeated a lieutenant, leaning in his saddle.

The line of soldiers marching behind stopped and waited as the officers dismounted and led their horses to the trickling Maravillas Creek.

“Cabellos.” A soldier said, pointing to the white capped outcroppings in the near distant hills.

In the cut known as Persimmon Gap, just north of the Big Bend National Park, where the outlaying edges of the valley reveal geologic history as far back as 300 million years ago, an erosion resistant white mineral known as novaculite cabello tattoo the hills and are named after the 16th century Spanish explorers who thought the outcroppings looked like horses.

This range of novaculite is part of the Quachita Thrust Belt and represents the tail end of the Appalachian Mountains. After wandering subterranean through much of Texas, this ancient fold resurfaces just north of Marathon. The white-brown rock abounds in the Marathon Basin, a 30 by 40 mile stretch of land that consists of plains, hilly lowlands and low mountain ridges carved from folded Paleozoic Strata, a product of uplifting where powerful forces in the crust, thrust up older rock through the younger, primarily volcanic rock of the area.

And just a stone’s throw away, the Santiago Mountains loom in the west, representing the tail end of the much younger Rocky Mountains. The two prominent mountain ranges of the United States terminate here in the Trans-Pecos, separated only by a few miles and over 200 million years.

Mountain Lions

After a short dig, the animal pulled itself under the sixteen foot high fence and squeezed free. It dashed across the short wet apron then found the hard traction of asphalt under its paws. It leapt north out of the fenced Everglades marsh, chancing to visit the drier Saw Grass Swamp on the other side of the freeway. Now its six foot body in full arc, airborne, a stretched mass of kinetic energy, illuminated in a flash of a headlight and at once collected in the grill of a Peterbilt, dead.

In 1994, Florida’s panther count had dropped to 30 according to US Fish and Wildlife. Measures to shore up the dwindling panther count, and prevent genetic bottlenecking, brought west Texas Mountain Lions to Florida in 1995. Similar in genetic make-up, several Texas Lions now make their home there and the Florida Panther count is over 100.

Although there are no six lane highways like Alligator Alley in the Big Bend, mountain lions in west Texas have their own challenges for survival.

The last field study of the west Texas Mountain Lion occurred in the 464 square mile Big Bend State Park. Performed by Texas Parks and Wildlife, twenty-one mountain lions were trapped, and collared between 1993 and 1997.

By monitoring the radio collared animals, males were found to have an average range of 135 miles while females averaged 79. The large range for the west Texas lion suggests low prey density. Scat analysis indicated that mule deer and javelina were the preferred prey. Female south Texas Mountain Lions in a similar study found that they killed a large prey every 5.88 days.

Seventeen of the twenty-one mountain lion control group died during the study, including fifteen that were shot or trapped by predator control practices in private lands adjacent to the park.

In Texas, the Mountain Lion is not protected by game laws. Open season on the big cat allows ranchers to cull the potential predators year round to protect their livestock. No recent studies to date have determined the actual amount of Texas livestock lost to Mountain Lions, nor has the 1993-1997 study collected sufficient data to determine the general health and future of the Texas Mountain Lion.